Nazis and Calvinists

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Banned

First, this is not a thread designed to attack Calvinism, although it will. It is a serious discussion.

This thread is in response to comments Iconoclast made about me in another thread.

There have been persons who say that Calvinism leads to a certain type of mindset that led to atrocities in the world, such as the extermination of the American Indians, and the Jews in WWII.

Erich Fromm, in his book Escape from Freedom wrote that Naziism could not have arisen without the influence of Lutheranism and Calvinism.

Other writers have pointed out that the extermination of the American Indians was due primarily to the Puritan or Calvinist mindset of early Americans who considered themselves "The Elect", while the Indians were an inferior "heathen" race that God did not love and should be eradicated.

That I am not making this accusation up out of thin air, here is some evidence that this idea has been around for a long time.

Again, this is not an attack thread, but I do believe that Calvinism has led to a certain mindset that leads to racism. When you believe you are elect and loved by God and that others are not elect and hated by God, this can be acted out.

As a slogan, "Indian removal" was a bit blunt. "Manifest destiny" had a more Orwellian snap. The term was coined in 1845 by Democratic Review editor John L. O’Sullivan, an Irish-Catholic.[22] O’Sullivan intended the phrase to mean the flowering of democracy, not Anglo-Saxonism. Ironically, Manifest Destiny became a metonym--and a justification--for Anglo-Saxon domination. O’Sullivan, perhaps unwittingly, spoke to the Calvinist mindset: The word "destiny" alluded to predestination. "Manifest" hinted at the materialization of wealth reserved for the Elect. Manifest Destiny was nothing more than "a cluster of flimsy rationalizations for naked greed," writes historian George Tindall.[23]

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This thread will probably be shut down real quick, but folks should think about this for a moment.

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Banned

In conclusion, Afrikaner Calvinism kept to its primitive roots because the liberalizing influences of the European Enlightenment were not able to reach the isolated Boer peoples in South Africa. As a direct result of the dominant Old Testament theology, there arose the belief that the Afrikaners were superior to the "obviously damned" Bantu and other indigenous peoples such as the Hottentots and the Bushmen. Through a long series of conflicts with these natives, a bond arose within the Boer society whereby they claimed to be a sanctified, chosen people of God. These factors caused Afrikaner Calvinism, though theologically similar to European Calvinism, to affect Boer society much differently than was the case among their counterparts in Europe. Thus, with these considerations in mind, apartheid may be viewed as a by-product of the strict-Calvinistic theology of the European settlers who came to be known as Afrikaners or Boers.

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Active Member

The problem with this is that Calvinism in no way logically necessitates these kinds of conclusions...

ANY idea or thought-process (even a correct one) can be miss-applied.
HINT:
Even if it weren't for Calvinism....than another set of excuses would have been made for this.
I have no doubt that there were plenty of people who used (or misused) Calvinist notions and even Biblically-sound notions in order to justify what they knew was wrong. I, in fact, have an extended family member who uses similar justifications for some insanely similar beliefs to this day. Simply put, he is miss-applying the ideas and they provide nothing but a convenient excuse for his wicked notions. If that particular individual weren't a "Calvinist"...than he would simply generate a similar set of excuses for his ideology. This is nothing new. But it is in no way a defeater of Calvinist soteriology.

I am sure there were plenty of "Arminians" who found their own justification for any wrongs and atrocities.

However, Naziism and it's Philosophy is STRAIGHT out of Darwinism...It was justified based on Darwinism and quite frankly, Naziism is nothing more than Darwinism taken to it's logical conclusion.
There is no correlation whatsoever between "Manifest Destiny" or any of those examples and Naziism.

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